1. The fall of Kabul and Joe Biden’s speech of 16 August 2021
With the fall of Kabul on August 15, 2021 and US troops hastily withdrawing from Afghanistan, a process still ongoing at the time of writing this contribution (17 August 2021) an intervention and also an experiment lasting almost two decades has come to an end. This endeavor that had been extremely risky and enormous hopes were attached to it. While it must be left to future historians and political analysts to assess this intervention as a whole, the chaotic and heart-wrenching scenes at Kabul airport and the embarrassing and disconcerting responses coming from government palaces all over the world do not bode well for the outcome of this future judgment.
Here the legal aspects of the last chapter of the Afghanistan intervention and of the job seekers database withdrawal shall stand at the center of the attention. While much has been written about the International Law aspects of the intervention in this country, the perception could be that International Law has less to say about the ensuing consequences. This view is mistaken as it neglects a rich body of pronunciations, documents and activities on the international level that, while maybe not yet constituting “hard norms” of firmly binding character, form nonetheless a mass of authoritative statements that have found wide support on highest institutional level. They relate to the “Responsibility to Rebuild” as part of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2?).
How far the present political positions are from these pledges and assurances given in the past is echoed by President Biden´s Remarks on Afghanistan made on August 16, 2021, one day after the collapse of the Afghan Government. There, he stated i.a. the following:
“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy. Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on American homeland.”